


wishes are real, not free

by defractum (nyargles)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-25
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-12 03:49:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9054034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nyargles/pseuds/defractum
Summary: A Beauty and the Beast inspired AU in which Andrew's outer monster reflects his inner monster.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dear jostenjunkies, 
> 
> Happy holidays! Hope you're having a great festive season, and I hope you enjoy!

~*~

Once upon a time, in a kingdom uncomfortably close to home, there was a young boy who lived in a house. And then he lived in another house, and another house, for the young boy, whose name was Andrew, did not have a family of his own.

One day, Andrew moved into a house with a mother and a father, though they were not his, and their son. And although the mother and father were very kind to him, his new brother was not. Drake was mean to Andrew, but only when his parents were not looking, and Andrew did not like him at all.

Drake made Andrew feel like he was the monster and not Drake, and soon after that, Andrew stopped feeling anything at all.

But feelings, like magic, grow even when they are quashed.

And feelings, like magic, always find a way to escape, resulting in the most explosive of changes.

~*~

**Ten years later**

Neil Josten is fucking cold.

The walk back to the village is simple enough but the ground is uneven, with damp leaves and churned mud hiding the perilous tree roots. His boots are starting to soak through, but he’s got a good load of branches tied up on his back and he’s carrying more in his arms, so he’ll get a decent meal in exchange for his efforts.

The innkeeper is a large man who likes his comforts, and so the inn is kept cozily warm at all times and if he can find a willing pair of hands to go out and collect the firewood, then he’s perfectly happy to trade that particular chore for a couple of hot meals a day.

Neil receives a thick slice of ham and some bread with mumbled thanks, and tucks himself in a corner of the room to eat. It’s too bad that this can’t last. Neil moves from village to village constantly, staying no more than a week at each. He says that he’s an apprentice when people ask, journeying just to the next town, but it’s been like this since his mother was killed.

To start with, Mary had set off with a single-minded focus, checking in with contacts she knew or stashes of money she had been squirrelling away. It became evident that she'd been planning this for a while now. But once she had everything she needed, they had set off in random directions, throwing Neil's father off the scent.

There had been no logic to the places Mary took Neil—and deliberately so—and now that she's dead, Neil has no plan left either. And so he keeps moving, as she had asked of him, from village to village, bartering for work and food in places that are too small to see the value of coins.

Except winter is here now. It had been acceptable in the summer months to spend a few days sleeping outdoors, here and there, and spending more time on the road than in villages and towns, but now Neil's bones ache for the warmth of the inns, and he's finding himself staying longer and longer at each one, somehow justifying it to himself each time.

There's a map of the local surroundings mounted on the wall of the inn; there are plenty of hunters here, and therefore plenty of people who go beyond the boundaries of the village every day, looking for more game. Neil studies it from his spot in the corner; there's a town not too far from here, and it's always easier to be anonymous in a bigger locale.

The door swings open, and a chill whisks through the air, teasing down his neck, before the door slams shut again. It's a group of young men, two supporting a third, whose leg is bandaged badly with a scarf. The inn is the centre of the village, and the people in here gravitate towards them naturally.

"I'll be fine," grumbles the injured man as his friends help him into a seat. "We went up nearer the haunted house. Figured no one else had chased game out of the area yet."

"The haunted house!" The exclamation is echoed around, and villagers burst into overlapping sentences that Neil struggles to make out.

"There's a good reason we don't go up there, you dolt." "I heard there's wolves in that area." "And did you find anything?"

The man grunts, and waves at the pheasants his friends are taking towards the kitchen. "Not great, not awful. But someone's been putting traps out there. Nearly stepped in one."

"Be glad that's all you got, going down near the haunted house."

Neil's ears perk up. "What's the haunted house?" he asks the closest person, a tall, dark woman who helps run the inn.

"What does it sound like?" she asks, lips pursing with amusement.

"Is it really haunted?"

She shakes her head. Neil knows her name, he's pretty sure, but he can't remember it right now. "It's the old Baron's manor. He lived in it until a few years ago, but he and his family all left in a hurry, sacked half the servants, said that it was cursed. They've stayed at court ever since."

"So now it's just an empty house?"

The woman—Dan, that's her name—shrugs. "Guess so. I had family working there. They were all pretty angry. Where else around here are you going to get work as a maid in a nobleman's house?"

Neil's mind grinds away, like suddenly oiled cogs. An abandoned house with plenty of game nearby—that's exactly what he needs to ride through the winter. It doesn't even matter if the manor is derelict; all he needs is to be able to board up a single room into a private space, and he can ransack the rest of the place for firewood.

He takes his plate back to Wymack, the innkeeper, who squints at him, and then refills it. Neil squints back at him, and Wymack waves him off without even bothering with an explanation. Well, Neil won’t complain.

He sets out for the haunted manor the next day. What was a fresh dusting of snow, powdery first thing in the morning, freezes over until Neil has to pick up a branch to help his footing, stabbing it through the ice and anchoring himself around it.

It’s evident that not many people have travelled up this way in a while. The path is a gap that’s a full wagon’s width in the trees, but it’s uneven and Neil keeps tripping over stones embedded in the mud. He sees some of those animal traps the other hunters mentioned, and makes his way over to see a couple of dead rabbits. They look recently dead, so he pries them out, all the while checking over his shoulder to see if anyone else is coming to claim them, and ties them to the bottom of his pack. Once he finds the manor, he’ll deal with food.

There is a mild problem with having dead, bloody animals tied to his back though, as Neil soon discovers. That is, if wolves can be considered mild problems.

Neil doesn’t even consider getting rid of his pack. The rabbits are tied on securely; he knows, because he did it, and that means that if the wolves get the rabbits, they get his pack. Everything he owns is in that pack. Instead, he makes a run for it. He can’t outrun a wolf, he knows, let alone half a dozen, but he’s next to a tree. He launches himself at the trunk, desperation letting him claw numb, cold fingers into the bark. A wolf springs forward at him and Neil kicks out at it; he feels the scrape of teeth along his calf, but he connects solidly and it drops to the ground. He keeps climbing.

Neil isn’t sure how long he’s up there—all he knows is that it’s long enough for the cold to turn the blood sluggish underneath the make-shift bandage he’s tied around his leg but not long enough for the wolves to have gone away despite incessant lobbing of bits of foliage at them—when someone else comes along.

A long shadow sweeps across the road and pounces into the midst of the wolves. Neil leans out as far as he can without risking his balance. All he can see is a dark figure, moving quicker than he’s seen anyone move. They howl, a couple of them turning around to attack the newcomer, only to get swiped; Neil sees blood splatter. The wolves scatter and then Neil is suddenly face to face with something he has no idea how to describe. For one thing, Neil is at least eight, ten feet up, and there’s a dark muzzle exhaling steaming breath onto his face. Following that is a face covered in dark fur, from which two gnarled horns twist up from the top and coal black eyes gleam. Well. That’s new.

Neil scrabbles for his pack. He keeps a handaxe in there, mostly used for firewood and he hadn’t wanted to waste it by throwing it to the wolves, but it’s the closest thing he has to a weapon.

“You have something of mine.” A deep voice rumbles from—the monster? Whatever it is.

“Fuck. You speak,” blurts out Neil, nearly slicing himself with the axe. He backs up further into the tree.

The creature steps back, and wipes its paws on the snow, leaving muddied pink streaks in the slushed snow. “Do I? I hadn’t noticed.”

Neil flexes his legs and ankles carefully before climbing his way down. He’s no good if he injures his legs. When he’s on the ground again, he looks up, way up, and says, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“The wolves,” says Neil carefully. He has a feeling that he’s missing part of the conversation already, though they’ve only exchanged a few words.

The beast grunts. “You going to make me repeat myself? You’ve got something of mine.”

“What?”

There’s a jab at Neil’s pack. Neil notes the wickedly sharp claws, and follows the pointing with his eyes. Ah. The rabbits dangling from his pack. He tugs at the knots with numb fingers as quickly as he can, rope grazing his skin, until a dark paw reaches out past him, slices clean through the rope and catches the rabbits before they hit the ground.

“Hey,” says Neil, startled. “That was perfectly good rope.”

The beast cocks its head as it slings the rabbits over its shoulders. “Hmm. You’re not afraid of me.”

Neil gathers up the bits of rope and tucks them into a pocket—they can probably be salvaged for something—and hides his trembling hands. “Nope. Too cold to be scared.”

Besides, the thing sets traps and eats rabbits. It probably doesn’t eat people too.

“Stupid,” remarks the beast, and then turns; having got what it came for, it heads off down the road, into the woods, leaving enormous paw prints in the snow behind it.

Neil sighs. It’s not too much of a loss; his original plan had been to find the haunted manor and then deal with food after that. The rabbits had just been a bonus, and it’s probably better not to have a wolf snack on his back anyway. He sets off at a brisk jog down the road before the wolves get back.

~*~

The house is closer than Neil was expecting it to be, the road soon veering off into a driveway with an enormous iron-wrought gate across it. It’s left ajar, so Neil squeezes himself through the gap, and treks up toward the mansion.

About halfway up the drive, he sees tracks. Familiar tracks.

“Bugger,” says Neil.

“I believe this is called trespassing.”

The fact that Neil does not shit himself when he jumps four feet into the air is actually very impressive. He whirls around, looking for the owner of that voice; it takes him a moment to spot the creature he’d encountered earlier, because it’s half hidden in the shadow of a copse of trees.

"You live here," says Neil. His heart is racing and his breath is coming out in tiny puffs of air.

The thing ignores him, and heads towards the house with a dozen large branches dragging behind it. Now he's looking at it from afar, waiting for the thumping in his ears to slow, Neil can see that the coat of fur goes across its entire body, complete with a tufty tail that sticks out when it turns its back to him. The back legs look like an animal's, with the knees backwards, and it looks awkward as it walks upright.

Neil manages to take a single step up the drive before its ears, situated either side of the horns, flick, and Neil knows it’s heard him. He carries on regardless: something that big? It's going to kill him if it wants to and there's nothing he can do about it.

"Are you following me?" There's a faint note of incredulity in the voice that drifts back towards Neil, though it doesn't stop.

"No," says Neil. "I was just headed to the haunted manor."

It snorts. "Is that what they're calling it now."

"They—the villagers? Yes. They think it’s haunted. It isn’t?" Neil frowns, an idea forming in his head. "It's not haunted, you're what drove the baron out. That was you!"

"A strong accusation."

It’s not a denial. Neil jogs to catch up with the beast as it reaches the door, and it grabs the door, slamming it shut behind it. Neil tugs at the enormous bronze handle, but it appears to be locked now. He sighs, and stamps his boots as he evaluates his options. He walks around the back, and breaks in through one of the windows.

He sets his pack down and evaluates his surroundings as he waits. The glass, he sweeps up dutifully into a heap in the corner so he won't cut himself on it. The room is dusty, unused, but there's a bed and a table and a wardrobe that he can repurpose, so it’ll do nicely.

It's not long before the door is flung open, and the monster fills the entirety of the doorway as it glowers at Neil. "Get out!"

"No," says Neil after he takes a moment to swallow the automatic fear. "You weren't even using this room." He blows at the mantelpiece, and dust motes flutter in the air.

"Get. Out."

Neil tucks his hands into his armpits to warm them. "No."

"You must have a death wish," says the creature flatly, unsheathing its claws.

"Being dead might be better than being cold," mutters Neil. He’d needed to get in, but now there’s a large hole in the room that’s letting in the whistling wind.

The beast watches him, watches as he evaluates his surroundings, and Neil narrates what he's thinking. "Look. It's just you here, right? You chased out anyone else. I need somewhere to stay, just for the winter. It's a big house, you don't need all the rooms."

"And if I do?"

"What, you get a lot of guests around?"

The beast lowers its hand, and it appears to be leaning against the doorway now, upper lip curled up in... amusement? It seems a very human sort of expression, anyway.

"I won't bother you. You don't eat me. I'm decent at hunting, so you don't have to worry about your traps—sorry about that, by the way. I'll take care of myself, and I'm quiet. In fact, I would really love it if you left me alone."

The beast regards him for a long moment, possibly taking him in properly for the first time. "No survival instinct."

It does leave him though, kicking the door closed behind it, and Neil scowls at it. He has pretty good survival instincts, he thinks; he wouldn't have managed this far without them. He pushes the thought of the creature to the back of his mind, and sets to work on the window. The shutters block out most of the wind, and he uses a bit of the fraying rope to tie the handles shut. There are clothes in the wardrobe, and he picks out the mustier ones to stuff around the edge of the window before drawing the heavy curtains shut.

The wardrobe itself gets its doors pulled off, Neil hacking away at them until he has a pile of reasonably sized wood fragments, which he arranges in the fireplace. Sparks fall onto the bit of fluff he keeps as tinder, and Neil coaxes it onto the wood, patient to let it grow in its own time.

Unfortunately, most of Neil’s experience with making fires is from making fires outdoors. He’s entirely experienced now at working with dead leaves or moss or wet foliage. He knows how to arrange branches so that there are smaller ones that will burn more quickly, mixed in with larger ones that will sustain the fire for longer.

What he doesn’t know, however, is that a fire made from lacquered and painted wood burns differently from untreated wood. And that is how Neil ends up with black, acrid smoke wafting out from the fireplace. He covers his mouth and nose with his sleeve; the smell is horrific even the little amount that isn't going up the fireplace. He grabs his pack and flees the room.

He finds himself in a long corridor, lined with similar rooms. The meandering paw prints in the dust show the beast looking for him, but also that this particular wing has been mostly unused, which is lucky for him.

Neil loses an hour to exploring the house. It's bigger than any he's been in before, and he's honestly baffled as to why anyone would need this many rooms. He loses another hour to mapping out the grounds, though this is more practicality than curiosity. He finds a few places he'd like to explore further, and the grounds back onto the woods, so he sets a few traps of his own. There's also a vegetable patch, long untended now, but that means that there will be tenacious, growing plants there at some point.

He finds the kitchen half due to luck and half due to common sense. It backs onto the vegetable patch, and there's a roaring fire there too. He happily rubs the cold out of his joints before getting out the bread and cheese that Wymack had foisted onto him when he left, and makes it more agreeable by melting the cheese over the bread.

There is, he notices after following his nose for a few moments, a pot tucked into the oven, still piping hot and left in there to keep warm. It smells meaty and inviting, and Neil stares at it for a long moment. What would an animal be doing with a cooked meal?

~*~

They fall into a strange pattern of coexisting. There had been growls, at first, when it had discovered Neil in the kitchen, but as Neil rightly pointed out, it was ridiculous trying to cook over his room fire when there were utensils and crockery and appliances here. Neil has a habit of eating at odd times of the night—he eats when he can, lest he doesn’t get the opportunity to do it later—and it seems his new house companion is similarly fond of the night. He rarely sees any sign of life before the sun is already high in the sky.

He does do a bit more exploring of the house, and surmises that most of the rooms conveniently close to the front door have been repurposed for occupation. The rooms are kept at a comfortable temperature at all times of the day or night which, added to the beast’s coat of fur, must mean that it likes to be warm.

Neil wonders vaguely where all that firewood is coming from, until one day he’s trying to string a net across a stream in the woods and hears an enormous amount of thumping, and finds it chopping down some of the smaller trees with a suitably enormous axe. It’s aware that Neil is watching, having flicked an ear in his direction upon his approach, but ignores him in favour of hauling the saplings wholesale back to the mansion over its shoulder. It leaves the axe swung into a tree stump when it carts its load back, and Neil gives it a heft, more out of curiosity than anything else. It’s too heavy for him to swing properly.

He goes back to collecting twigs and fallen branches, and catching the small, slippery fish that get stuck in his nets.

Every so often, the beast heads out into the woods and thrashes around, roaring and snarling and causing a terrible noise. The first time it had happened, Neil had already gone to bed, and had nearly slid off the silk sheets in alarm. He still doesn’t know why it does that, but he’s getting so used to its existence that he does have to frequently remind himself that it’s an enormous furred beast that is not quite goat nor bear nor deer, and it talks. Who knows why it does anything, honestly.

The mystery thickens when Neil discovers the library. It’s a vast library, even for a mansion of this size, with bookshelves that spiral up far above his head and ladders and runners to get to each of them. Parts of it have obviously been untouched by a while, the books themselves covered in dust, but parts of them have clearly been moved recently. There are books missing from some of the shelves, and some stacked on tables here and here around the room.

The beast is in an enormous velvet armchair, which nevertheless looks small compared to its occupant, with a book open in front of it, and it looks up at Neil when Neil enters. He’s not going to make the same mistake as last time and insult its intelligence, even if he is confused that it can read. “Good book?” he asks.

“Could be better,” says the beast, and looks down and turns another page. Neil notices that it’s almost all of the way through. “Go away.”

He goes, and has another think about it all.

~*~

(He comes back to the library another day, because even he has limits on how bored he can deal with being, and it’s going to be winter for at least another two months. This time, there is no one in there, and he peruses the books until he finds some fiction stories that don’t seem too difficult to digest. The beast finds him in there and harrumphs at his presence, but seems to tolerate him being there if he was there first.)

~*~

"What are you?" Neil asks eventually. They mostly read in silence, though Neil will sometimes look up to see the beast staring out of the window. They exchange words here and there, but Neil’s a private person and he affords the beast the same respect he would any other creature that can gut him with a twitch of a paw.

"Who knows." The beast snorts, its entire body heaving as it does so. Neil frowns. He doesn't get the impression that it was being flippant. "You're asking the wrong question," it says.

Neil doesn't understand. It's a creature, obviously with human capabilities, with speech and understanding and intelligence.

"Ask me what I used to be."

"What did you used to be?" repeats Neil dutifully. He senses that there's more, much more to the story than he had perhaps originally assumed.

The beast lowers itself into an armchair, an oddly human gesture as it throws its feet onto the low table. "A boy."

"Oh shit," says Neil, because that seems like an appropriate response. "Then how did you—why are you like this now?"

The beast shrugs. "Who cares."

Neil looks it over. The long, shaggy fur covers its entire body, and the elongated muzzle confuses any chance of him seeing if there’s face underneath. "You used to be a boy," he repeats with incredulity. "Was it—magic?"

He's loathe to use the word. Magic is scarce these days, so scarce that people claiming to have those gifts are often scoffed at. For one thing, there used to be learning and training and such things for people with magic, except these days there's no one to teach it to those who might be capable of learning. Some women get it passed down to them from their mothers, but it’s largely practical magic that people bother to remember. Magic like this is highly sought after, and rarely heard of.

"Well it wasn't something I ate," says the beast sourly.

Neil tentatively reaches out a hand. "May I touch you?" he asks.

It growls in warning. Neil takes back his hand, and doesn't try again. He's trying to imagine the beast as a person, a man, a boy. "What was your name?" he asks.

The beast cocks his head for a moment, as if it's been so long than anyone has ever thought about his name that he can barely remember it. "Andrew. Andrew Minyard."

"Andrew," says Neil.

~*~

This high up, snow lines the tiles of the roof, melting even though the ground is still clear, for now. But the trees grow higher still, so instead of being able to see for miles around, the feeling that they are alone, in an isolated patch of the woods cleared out especially for them, intensifies. Neil has a habit of swinging his legs idly over the ledge; he likes it up here.

Neil keeps himself in shape with as much exercise as he can manage. Stretches and that sort of thing, he can mostly do in his room, but he also enjoys running, and the grounds of the mansion and the woods surrounding it are a good challenge. He sets some buckets of hot water onto the fire before he sets out, and the water is hot by the time he gets back, ready for him to wipe himself down. He's pillaged the rest of the room by now, and has discovered the trunks of clothes packed away with scented balls that keep the moths away, so he has a few new changes of clothes now, though things tend to be a bit long on him.

As the days pass though, it's raining more and more frequently, and even when it's not, the grass is slippery and the ground is muddy; precarious running grounds. He takes to running around the house instead. It's certainly big enough, and the stairs get his thighs working. He likes to head towards the servants quarters, where the corridors and stairs are narrow and rickety; they make him think about what he's doing instead of thinking about other things.

That's how he discovers the entrance to the roof. The mansion has four floors, and the fourth is largely attic rooms, used for storage and servants. He finds a staircase that leads up again, and finds a door at the top that is oiled and unlocked. Andrew must come up here too. Neil pokes his head out, and is met with a brisk gust that whips across his face. The rooftop is an open space with a low rail, interrupted only by the chimneystack that puffs smoke up continuously. There are pots here and there that have withered plants, and some faded bunting that was never put away.

Up this high, Neil can see the expanse of the grounds. The stables, long abandoned, he's never bothered to explore, and the rose gardens are barren at this time of year. The front path, he can see from the other side, and also the large paw prints, followed by the wonky lines of a tail that droops into the mud. He can see where Andrew last came out, through the kitchen side door, and where he hops the wall into the wood instead of bothering to walk all the way to the gate and around.

The air is crisp and thin up here, and Neil sits with his legs through the metal of the railings, swinging into the wind. It's a biting chill that greets him, seeping through the seat of his breeches and into his thighs, but for a moment, Neil feels alone in the world, untouchable and undiscoverable. He presses his cheek to the iron railing, and closes his eyes, and dares to dream.

~*~

The next time he's up here, he finds Andrew with his back pressed against the warm chimney, rubbing his back against the coarse brick like a bear with an itch.

Neil freezes mid-step, still holding the doorway open. Andrew freezes too, mid-wiggle, and somehow manages not to appear completely ridiculous.

"Oh," says Neil. "Hello." There's a grin threatening to break onto his face, and if there's one thing his mother taught him, it's not to laugh at things that could kill you.

"Fuck," mutters Andrew, and drops to all fours. He slinks off to the other side of the chimney.

Neil had only really been up here because he'd wanted to get some cool fresh air. He's halfway through another run, and the high temperatures Andrew seems to keep the mansion at means that he's sweating more than he would normally.

Neil has to admit that he hasn't thought too much about the upkeep of a creature, despite the fact that he more or less lives with one. The fur is long and shaggy, and he can see where parts of it are matted. Cooking and working human utensils with paws must be a difficulty too.

Instead of walking around the rooftop, as he had meant to, Neil jogs back down to his room instead, thinking carefully. He stretches himself out—as someone who relies almost entirely on his physicality for survival, he's too conscious that an injury might mean an inability to eat.

He plans out the things he needs. They're mostly things that should be found in a nobleman's house, but he's going to have to do a bit of hunting. Practical things like heavy iron scissors, he finds in the servants rooms. He finally makes his way out to the stables, and picks through the neglected buildings until he finds a good quality brush and a bucket.

That evening, he deliberately walks onto the ground floor, where the rooms that Andrew uses the most are. He pauses on the bottom step of the ornate staircase, because the door to the parlour is ajar, and Neil can swear that he can... hear talking.

That would be madness. There's no one else here, surely, unless Andrew is talking by himself. It's a low murmur though, nothing like the rumble that Neil usually hears come from him.

Neil steps into the entrance hall—his footstep echoes around, and the murmur instantly stops. He knock at the door to the parlour, and there's a long silence.

"Andrew?"

"You said you wouldn't bother me," says Andrew's voice from within.

"I wondered," starts Neil. He didn't rehearse this bit. He's not good at remembering words by rote like this anyway, usually trusting himself to say that's truest at the time. "You let me stay here. You didn't have to."

"That's what you were wondering?"

Neil's impatience starts to grow. The constant sarcasm is growing old, though Lord knows Neil shouldn't be the one to throw stones when it comes to that. "I was wondering if I could do something in return," he says.

Andrew doesn't answer. When he opens the door for Neil, Neil can somehow tell that there's a frown on his face.

"I don't want to owe you anything," adds Neil, because he knows that Andrew won't understand a favour, something Neil wants to do because he feels like doing it. He understands reciprocity though.

"You don't."

"Good," says Neil, and sidles in past him with his things. The water was hot, but it's starting to get lukewarm now, and he's careful not to slosh it everywhere. He puts it next to the fireplace anyway.

The parlour is a mockery of what it likely once was. It looks like Andrew's raided the various rooms for bits and pieces that he wanted, and got rid of anything ornamental in return. The only light is the enormous fireplace, so despite the cream furnishings, the entire room is shrouded in shadows, and the heavy drapes over the windows look like they haven’t been drawn up in a while.

There are heaps of throws and cushions over the couch, with a worn indent that shows Andrew’s preferred lounging spot, and half the bowls from the kitchens seem to be stacked in a box within convenient reach. In the corner, there lurks an ornate bathtub, with its original plumbing evidently wrenched out, and what looks like an entire tree's worth of firewood is stacked next to the fireplace.

It looks remarkably similar in priorities to Neil's room, though there's more in here.

Andrew looms over Neil, ungainly on his back legs. He splits his time between what must be an imitation of human behaviour, and what's natural for this form. When he's on all fours, Neil's seen him run faster than a horse, sleek and agile. He's slender enough to wind through the trees at speed, and the paws seem to protect him from the uneven ground.

"I'm sure you'd have tried this yourself," says Neil, "but I have opposable thumbs, so it makes sense to take advantage of that."

He snips the scissors a couple of times in demonstration. Andrew growls, and raises a paw of gleaming claws.

"Come on," says Neil, more quietly. "Your fur looks uncomfortable, and there are bits you can't reach yourself. I can fix that."

Andrew settles down on his haunches next to Neil, but leaves his claws out. Fair enough.

Using the brush and some warm water to help, Neil starts to make his war through the fur. He makes sure to stay within Andrew's sight, starting with patches up and down his arms. Clumps of fur fall out by itself when he starts to brush it, and liberal use of the scissors allows Neil to cut out the largest of matts.

There are patches on Andrew's back that are shorter than others, probably the result of his chimney scratching, and Neil trims the rest of the fur to that length. It's a laborous task but repetitive and relaxing, and soon the terse silence changes into just... silence.

Andrew's muscles are solid under Neil's hands, and there's a tiny shudder when Neil reaches the more delicate fur around his neck. Neil also remembers, just in time, that Andrew isn't wearing breeches, and decides somewhat prudently that he can probably finishes at the hip. When he's down, there's enough fur on the floor to make a rug.

"You get to sweep that up," says Andrew, following Neil's gaze.

Neil's lips twitch as he puts the scissors down and stretches. His fingers click, and his arms appreciate the rest. "Does it feel better?"

Andrew's ears flick. "Yes."

Neil's not exactly the most skilled of barbers out there, but it does look a lot less unruly. Andrew rubs his arms, almost unconsciously, and then stands and shakes out the rest of the fur.

"I was thinking about other things as well," says Neil, getting the broom and doing as he's told. "It makes more sense to divide labour according to strengths."

Andrew grunts, which is practically encouragement to continue, coming from him.

"Like I said. Opposable thumbs. And smaller hands. I can sew and mend those," he says, pointing at the enormous rips across the couch, where the stuffing is falling out. "And I can clean the chimneys and that sort of thing."

"And in return?"

Neil shrugs. "You catch more than I do, and quicker. Anything that involves heavy lifting. Keeping the villagers away from the mansion."

Andrew looks at him.

"That's what you do, isn't it? Occasionally keep people away?" He'd figured it out, finally, after seeing Andrew on his way back after hunting for the day, and Andrew had been sat on a log, roaring occasionally with a bored expression.

"It's better for everyone," says Andrew finally, and Neil lets the topic drop.

It’s not until he spots the pot of stew, empty but for the bones littering the bottom, next to the stack of bowls, that Neil comes up with a new idea, and thinks fast. He likes this, he thinks. Even as a solitary person, both by nature and by necessity, he does want company every so often to stop himself going stir-crazy. He’s started to talk to himself a lot more now that his mother’s gone.

"Would you," he asks delicately, "like to join me for some food that isn't stew?"

Andrew's eyebrows—or, well, the tufts of fur that would be where eyebrows are on a human—raise. Neil shrugs. "I figure that one of the things you can't do is use most of the kitchen utensils."

And so Neil ends up doing most of the cooking. Andrew has human muscle memory and claws, but it’s still easier for Neil to skin things and debone the hunts that Andrew brings back. He mends the couch in Andrew’s room and brings oil lamps in. He comes around in the afternoon to light them all, and the parlour now seems three times the size it did previously.

In return, Andrew brings back things that Neil couldn’t by himself—a wild boar that they eat for days on end, and the partridges that fly away when Neil tries—and single-handedly chops enough firewood for them both.

It’s… companionable. Neil would be surprised if it lasted.


	2. Chapter 2

~*~

On the shortest day of the year, or thereabouts by Neil's reckoning, they end up on the rooftop. Halfway through winter now, and Neil has never felt so complacent in the last year; his mother would have roundly beat him if she knew he was holing up in a single place for so long. He's going to have to move on in the spring.

"It was me," says Andrew into the stillness. He looks out over the woods instead of at Neil. "I changed myself."

Neil is startled out of his own thoughts, and wracks his brain, trying to think which conversation this is a continuation of. If Andrew's talking about changing himself—oh. "Into this form?"

"Yes."

"You have magic?"

"Looks like it."

"Why do it?" he asks, tucking his legs up so they fit under his chin. Andrew so rarely offers information about himself, about his time before he was here.

"Wrong question." Andrew does that, too, at times, when it seems he's willing to part with a piece of himself, but he's carefully controlling which portions he ekes out. "My power works in unpredictable ways."

Andrew leads him down to the ground floor. Neil's seen what Andrew normally does, which is leap down the floors without touching the stairs at all, bounding from landing to bannister to floor. This time, they walk, and even at two steps at a time, Neil can see the awkwardness in Andrew's gait. He doesn't mention it.

Though Neil's a regular in the parlour by now, this time Andrew turns into a different room. It was once a study, Neil thinks. Shelves line the walls, and a large writing desk commands the attention of the room. There are stacks of books on top of it. There was perhaps a reclining couch too, for more informal studies, but it's been replaced by a bed, an enormous four poster thing that sits laughably out of place. There are more throws and cushions piled atop that, in a nest. This, Neil realises, is where Andrew sleeps.

"Well, finally!"

That's not Andrew's voice. Neil starts, and swings around, looking for someone. There are no oil lamps in here—Andrew can't light them by himself, after all—so the corners of the room ooze with shadows.

Something nudges Neil's feet, and he lashes out without thinking. His foot connects solidly and he sends whatever it was flying across the room. He stares at it, heart racing. A footstool. It hits a corner of the desk with a squeak, and when it lands, it scuttles around the desk and out of sight. He looks up, eyes wide, to see Andrew huffing at him in laughter. "What was that?!"

"You're fine with this," says Andrew, gesturing at himself, "but get freaked out by a little animated furniture?"

Neil feels a little foolish. "You told me, didn't you? Your magic."

Andrew tips his head in acquiescence.

"That was exciting," says another new voice, and Neil looks wildly around again. An ornate clock on the mantelpiece lazily waves a bit of wrought gold decoration at him, as if it were a hand. Neil stares.

"Nicky," says Andrew, gesturing towards the footstool first, then the clock. "And Aaron."

There are so many things to process that Neil can barely decide what questions to ask first. "You gave them names? They talk?"

The footstool waddles out from behind the desk, and Neil is sure that if it could glare at him, it would. It moves, a gap between the carved wood and the cushion seat seeming to serve as a mouth. "I'm Andrew's cousin. And Aaron's his twin."

Neil looks from Andrew, to the small, grumpy clock on the mantelpiece, and says the first thing that comes to mind. "Identical then, are you?"

Aaron chimes angrily at him. Andrew snorts, and flops over onto the bed. "I changed them too."

"Accidentally," says Nicky. "Well, I'm pretty sure it was accidental."

"I was sure," says Neil slowly, "that I heard voices once, when I came downstairs. Have you been here all this time?"

Nicky flicks a tassel in Neil's direction. "It's not like we can go out and join in the winter parties."

Neil walks around to the desk. Andrew watches him closely, but doesn't stop him. The books on the desk are old. 'Arcane sciences', says the spine of one. 'Theory of unseen forces', says another. They're not words Neil's seen before; he has to sound them out loud before realising what the words are, and then flips them open. "Magic books," he says in awe. "They're books on magic."

"Yeah," says Andrew gruffly. It goes without saying that all this time, Andrew's been trying to learn more about magic, teach himself. Reverse the magic he unwittingly cast upon himself.

"Where did you find these?" Neil does a quick estimate. There's at least eight or ten books here, and he's sure now that all the times he's seen Andrew in the library, he's been reading yet more. A few weeks ago, he would have guessed that there weren't even this many different books on magic left in the world at all.

Andrew jerks his head to indicate upstairs. "The baron and his son is obsessed with it. They collected books from all over the world and stored them here."

With a single sentence, Andrew has revealed more about himself than in the last month. It must mean that Andrew came here, to this mansion, deliberately, setting out to find out about his power. He didn't just chase off a family for the benefit of somewhere to live, he was here for this, these books. The woman from the inn, Dan, she'd said that the baron left for court several years ago. That's how long Andrew has been here.

~*~

Now that Neil's met them, Nicky and Aaron make more regular appearances around the house. It's a pain for Aaron to get anywhere—his preferred method of transportation seems to be a controlled fall onto Nicky's cushion, and then being carted wherever on Nicky's back—but they seem to have the routine down well.

"How long have you been here?" asks Neil, when Andrew's not in the library. He's discovered that Nicky can still somehow see things—two little buttons on the cushion are where his eyes are—but he obviously doesn't have hands, and so he can't actually read a book by himself. Neil has taken to reading aloud whenever he finds a good book.

Nicky shrugs. He's more open than Aaron, who isn't so much cautious about revealing his past as uninterested in Neil. "It's hard to keep track of time here? But Aaron found out that he had a twin he'd never met and, you know, we thought it was important to track him down, except he wasn't with the family my aunt had left with him, or the next one, or – well. Anyway. We found him here eventually."

Nodding, Neil turns the page to begin the next story. He's not going to pry for details that Andrew hasn't let him know. It doesn't count if Andrew isn't the one to tell him.

It's only mid-afternoon, but the darkness is already here, and Neil is startled when he hears footsteps. Human footsteps, the unmistakable sound of a hard leather heel clicking against marble floor. The library is just off the landing where the stairwell leads up from the entrance hall, and Neil knows from experience that the entrance hall echoes any and all sounds within it. He exchanges a look with Nicky, and picks up an oil lamp, closing the shutter to dim out all the light. His pickaxe is in his room, and has been, unused, for weeks now.

Neil inches out through as small a gap as he can fit through in the doorway, and closes the door shut behind him. He knows the layout of the mansion now, and he creeps towards the stairs, peering through the bannisters for unfamiliar shadows.

There's someone in the entrance hall, holding a flaming torch aloft. The shadows dance, as the wind billows in through the front door, left ajar, and Neil can't make out who it is. Then, from the corner of the room, a shadow unfolds itself: Andrew.

Andrew slinks toward the door, blocking the path of retreat as the person wanders further into the mansion. His paws mask any sound of approach, and it's not until Andrew rears back onto his hind legs and slams the front door shut in one motion does the intruder even realise he's there.

There's a scream, and then the torch drops to the ground. Neil gasps, but it only rolls a few feet; he pads down the stairs, trying to get a better view. It's oil-soaked centre stops it from extinguishing, but the floor is marble, and inflammable.

"Who are you?" roars Andrew.

There's a muffled whimper from somewhere around Andrew's knees. Andrew hauls the person to their feet with one paw, and picks the torch up with the other. It's a man, Neil realises, and he recognises that livery. He's seen around, on the portraits and hanging in the servants' wardrobes; they're the colours of this house.

It takes a bit of shaking and snarling (actually, Neil is sure that if Andrew didn't insist on the shaking and snarling, they might have got answers sooner) before the man stammers out why he's here. He's been sent by the Moriyamas, who are intent on getting their house back.   
He'd been warned by other members of house staff, those employed by the Moriyamas for a long time, that the house was haunted, possessed by the demon, but he hadn't really registered what that meant, evidently.

Andrew roars, and the man faints.

Neil comes down the stairs, and Andrew looks at him. (He's pretty sure Andrew has night vision, given the amount of lurking he does in the dark.) "You just going to leave him there?"

"I might," says Andrew, and from anyone else, that might be sulking. Andrew doesn't take the invasion of what he considers his space well; the only reason Neil suspects he got away with it is because he negotiated a tiny part of it that Andrew wasn't even using.

"Have they sent people before?" Neil looks down at the man the Moriyamas have sent. He's starting to stir, and there is the distinct smell of someone who has relieved themself. Andrew's sense of smell is much stronger than Neil's, so if he can keep a straight face, so can Neil.

Andrew nods shortly, and walks away from him. "Every so often. More frequently recently. Usually their messengers don't make it back."

Neil raises an eyebrow. He's pretty sure that Andrew wouldn't bat an eyelid at killing a person, the right person, but he doesn't seem the kind who would shoot the messenger. "Magic?"

"Simple forgetting spell."

"Why not let them come back? You could just take the magic books and go."

Andrew scowls at him. "And go where?"

They stare at each other, realising that they are not understanding each other for the first time in a while. Neil takes a life on the road for granted; even these last couple of months have started to feel like he's settling down too much. But it's true, it's different for him. He can offer his services to a farm in exchange for lodgings, or immerse himself in a busy town for a few weeks.

Andrew can't do that. On the other hand though, Andrew doesn't seem the high maintenance type. As long as they stick to rural areas with hunting, they could get by.

"Anywhere," says Neil. "Could just keep travelling."

Andrew regards for a long moment. "With you?"

Oh. Neil had taken that part for granted. "You don't have to," he says, sounding slightly miffed.

Andrew turns away, to put the torch away properly on a bracket, and luckily Neil has learnt enough about him to know that it's not a 'no'.

"The others," he says stiffly. Neil is used to thinking of himself; Andrew has obligations. Nicky and Andrew, somehow, don't need to eat or perform human bodily functions, but, well. Neil can imagine that life on the road is hard when you're a clock and your arms are two inches long.

"Maybe if you send one back as a message, they'll stop trying."

"No. If they know one survived, they figure their chances are higher." There's a sudden squeal of hinges, and they both look around. Shit. The guy is already out of the door; Andrew must have been really distracted to not notice him moving, even in the darkness.

They race for the door, but there's a crackle in the air, and Neil feels like there's a thousand strings tied to him, all pulling him in different directions. From the looks of it, Andrew's experiencing the same thing.

"Magical trap," says Andrew with disgust. The messenger was more prepared than they had thought then.

Neil shivers. It doesn't affect him when he doesn't try to move, but once he does, it's like a hundred light pinpricks keeping him from moving. "Can you get rid of it?"

"Haven't studied it," Andrew says curtly. Neil waits, as Andrew tries a few incantations, but though nothing seems to work, the effects of the trap seem to fade over time. Andrew stalks over to where the trap was sprung when they can move again, what feels like an eternity later. There is what seems to be a shattered glass orb on the floor, and Andrew deposits the shards out of the front door with an angry sweep of his tail.

Neil heads back towards the library. "We've got work to do."

With a bound, Andrew matches his stride. "What work?"

"They'll be more prepared when they come the next time."

~*~

"You haven't found any answer in all of those books?" asks Neil. He waited until he was alone with Andrew. He's warming to Nicky, if not Aaron, but it feels like they barely know Andrew, or even really want to, whereas Neil understands the value of different silences. Andrew growls at him impatiently, but Neil persists.

Though Andrew has a vast knowledge of spells that require incantations, which range from the practical to the hysterical, none of those spells seem to have any correlation to Andrew's accidental outbursts of magic.

"I _know_ the answer," says Andrew. There's heat in his voice, betrayed by a rumble, but no volume. Even when angry, Andrew controls himself. "It's not a spell. I didn't cast any incantation or use any magical tools."

Neil waits him out.

"It's – desire. Want. If I want something hard enough, it just happens."

And, oh. It's like Andrew has handed him a key that unlocks all of the mysteries about him, and Neil doesn't know what to do with it. It's obvious, really, once he's had the time to think about it properly, and here in the mansion, Neil's had nothing but time.

Andrew's a boy who thinks himself a monster, and so he is one. He hasn't had a family, and so when Nicky and Aaron turns up... well, Andrew wanted them, desperately, to never leave him, and he had made it impossible for them to do so. Nicky was sociable, capable of making friends with anyone, with a partner he had moved in with, and Aaron had had a sweetheart in the town they were from. Once they found Andrew, once they knew what he was now, they would have left, and so Andrew had tethered them to him in the only way he knew how.

If Neil had been the type of man who knew pity, he would have pitied all three of them. As he is not, Neil just looks at Andrew, and understands.

"Twice," says Neil. He carefully rolls up the too-long sleeves of his purloined coat, and sits next to Andrew. The roof is cold, but the sun is shining and Andrew radiates body heat. "You've used your magic that way twice. There must be something else. There must be more that you want."

"Thrice," says Andrew. "Nicky and Aaron aren't the only ones in the mansion."

Neil can scarcely remember how to breathe. Andrew is still sprawled next to him, but Andrew is a study in practised nonchalance and it rarely bears a resemblance to his actual mood. "You think I'm here because of your magic."

Andrew exhales, and his breath mists up in front of him, clouding his expression, what little of it Neil can read from under the fur anyway. "Yes."

Neil thinks that his heart is going to burst from too much emotion. On the one hand, fear: he's been thinking a lot about how settled, sedentary, senile he's become but not doing anything about it. On the other, acceptance: it did seem weird that he just happened to hear about the mansion, and his time here has been so smooth.

But most of all, Neil is just really fucking angry at how little Andrew thinks of himself. "You," he splutters, barely able to string together a coherent sentence. "That's so presumptuous. And _selfish_. You think your misery caused me to turn up in your life, and your magic made me become your – your _friend_?"

The words hang in the air, startling Neil himself. He's not thought of Andrew as a friend before. They don't deal with words such as this.

"We're not friends," says Andrew.

"And I'm not a fucking candelabra," says Neil. "You didn't turn me into anything, and I can leave whenever I want to. I'm still human."

"Someone around here has to be."

Neil throws his hands in the air. Unbelieveable. He wants to grab Andrew by the mane and shake him. Andrew's deliberately surrounded himself with things and situations that make him hate himself. Neil is not a part of that; Neil is the exact opposite, he's something new. He just has to make Andrew believe that.

~*~

It's over a week's ride to the capital, which means that they have two to figure out what they're going to do. Neil tells the others when Andrew is out hunting, and Nicky whistles in appreciation. "Damn. We'd better get ready then."

"Get ready for what?" asks Aaron sourly. "What are you going to do when an army turns up at the door, trip them up?"

"Hey," says Neil. "He's doing this for you. So you can have some peace."

"This entire thing is his fucking fault," says Aaron. "You think I'd be a clock if it weren't for him?"

Neil ignores him. Andrew caused it, but that isn't the same thing as it being his fault. When Andrew gets back, he helps him lug in an entire deer. "Have you ever salted meat?" asks Andrew. He keeps going out to hunt, but Neil stores as much as he can in the larder and storerooms now.

Andrew's making other provisions, Neil knows, which involves muttered incantations as he drifts around the house. He tells Neil not to go onto the front drive. And Neil makes his own plans. He's found where the winter clothes are kept in storage and rooted out a pair of sturdy boots and coat. A portion of the cured meats, once they've dried properly, are sliced and packaged, stuffed into the corners of his pack. He sharpens his axe. If Andrew noticed, and Neil knows he notices, he doesn't say anything.

They arrive in the middle of the night, thirteen days later. It's a surprise, because they must have run horses ragged to get here this quickly, especially through the snow and rain and slush, but at the same time, it's difficult to mask a troop of men on horseback, carrying torches.

"Stay here," says Andrew to Aaron and Nicky as he extinguishes the oil lamps they've all become accustomed to.

Behind him, Aaron mutters, "Where the fuck else am I going to go?"

Luckily, Nicky shushes him, because otherwise Neil might have had to turn around and clock a clock. Neil detours to grab his pack.

"Going to run?" asks Andrew as Neil meets him in the rooms that overlook the road. Their torches flicker in the distance, mere flashes of light in between the trees at this point.

"Not yet," says Neil. "Want to come with me?" They both know that he can't; want has little to do with it.

The sound of a well-organised militia reach them through the trees, with barked orders and stomping horses. They pause outside the driveway, cautious when the iron wrought gates swing open easily for them. And still, Andrew watches from outside the window.

They're confident in their own strength, not bothering to split their forces and attempt to surround the house. No doubt, they think it's just Andrew here.

When they start up the drive, Neil finds out why he was supposed to stay off it. The men sink three feet into the mud; the entire front drive is a bog now. Formation breaks as men shout and flail; their advantage is gone. Horses struggle, and so do the men when they abndon the horses and keep going on foot. When Neil looks over at Andrew, his face is lit from the torches on the ground, and his fangs gleam when he grins. Neil grins in return.

"That's Riko Moriyama," says Andrew. Neil cranes his head to see where Andrew is jabbing. There's a young man with dark hair wading determinedly towards them. There's a portrait of him as a stern-faced child in one of the corridors.

"The one obsessed with magic." Neil remembers. He had asked, a few days ago, whether the Moriyamas might employ witches or wizards to challenge Andrew.

Andrew had shook his head, uninterested. Men so obssessed with power, and yet who did not have it themselves, were unlikely to surround themselves with people who had that power. They might have bought magic traps, such as the one the messenger had thrown at them, but those would be calculated, predetermined moves that they could control.

The troops on the drive straggle to the front door, and shake themselves off, regrouping as professionals. Neil is impressed. They relight the torches dropped into the mud and rally themselves.

"I hope you have more up your sleeve," says Neil.

"There is nothing up my sleeve."

"A joke. This must be going well." Neil watches as they try the front door. It's barred with the steel they never bother to use ordinarily. Neil follows Andrew as they relocate to the top of the stairs.

It takes a few moments for Neil's eyes to get used to the dark again. He can hear the thumping of the battering ram they've finally managed to get up the drive. The entire house shudders. After a few moments, there is a loud, familiar crackle, and the doors blow inwards, clean off the hinges. Men swarm in after the explosive magic.

They've obviously been well-informed, because they split off into groups, each headed in a separate direction, but they don't even get all the way into the entrance hall before they are surrounded.

Andrew taps a claw on the wall, a tiny hollow sound, and suddenly a thousand candles, scrounged from every room, light themselves. Neil throws an arm up to protect his eyes, slowly letting them adjust: he surmises from the yelling that Riko's men had been suitably surprised.

Andrew taps a second claw, and there's the sound of ringing metal as a half score suits of armour snap to attention. Their joints are ungreased, and there's a horrific squeal of rusted metal as they step off their pedestals and out from where they had been hidden just out of the entrance hall.

Metallic footsteps echo around the entrance hall as they come to guard their new master. There's confused yelling now, as the suits of armour draw their swords. The entrance hall is entirely marble; the carpets don't start until the first step of the staircase. That's good because Neil's mind is noticing that it would be much easier to clean the blood off the marble. He wonders in a detached aside if Andrew had planned it that way.

"There!" Some of the men spot them, or perhaps only Neil, because Andrew is still sunk into the shadows. They fight their way towards them, but the staircase bottlenecks them, and Andrew taps a third claw. The tapestries fly off the wall and wrap around their targets, throwing mummified bodies back down the stairs.

But now the initial shock is gone. These men are trained to fight, and the suits of armour are old. There are only so many tapestries, and everyone's vision has adjusted to the flare of light. And they've been noticed. The men regroup, pushing unmoving bodies to the side.

They've been chipped away; nearly half of the men are scattered around the room like so much debris, but what's left is moving as a solid block with Riko at their head up the stairs.

Andrew taps his fourth, and last claw. Every single flame in the room extinguishes. Plunged into the darkness, movement grinds to a halt. Neil feels more than sees Andrew wrap an arm around his waist. He doesn't need Andrew to tell him to keep quiet; he lets Andrew drag him into the labyrinth of rooms, climbing up and up.

Neil figures it out before they reach it: they're going to the roof. Neil shivers when the blast of cold of hits him. Andrew sets him down and, to his surprise, plops Neil's pack next to him. In the heat of the excitement, he'd forgotten about that.

"Last chance to run," murmurs Andrew, nodding at the rickety metal ladder that winds down the side of the mansion. He's right. All the men are inside the house, trying to find and re-light their torches. They'll have to search the rooms one at a time. It's the one chance Neil will have when they're all in the house and he isn't.

Neil shakes his head. "Not if you don't."

They wait on the roof for what seems like an eternity. Neil walks back and forth across the rooftop to keep himself limber, his axe loose by his side; in contrast, Andrew doesn't move at all, just sits on his haunches, opposite the door.

Neil starts to realise what's happening when the windows start flickering light in the darkness. He leans over the edge of the roof, prompting Andrew to break his stillness and hiss at him. There's a rail, but it's low, and the roof is still slippery from the day's hail. Neil leans over far enough to see the line of windows, the yellow and orange crackle.

Shit. This wasn't in the plan. They'd just assumed that they'd check each of the rooms for Andrew, moving on when they didn't find him. If Aaron and Nicky stayed still, they'd avoid detection, but they'll be trapped now.

"Andrew. Andrew! They're setting the rooms on fire!"

Andrew snarls. He, too, immediately understands the danger. They bolt towards the door when it flings open. Neil gasps, skidding into Andrew's back when Andrew immediately stops, face to face with Riko Moriyama. He has to get down, find Aaron and Nicky.

"You! Demon!" bellows Riko, the wind whipping his voice from his mouth. There's a sword at his side, but in his hand is a gun, aimed at Andrew. He hasn't spotted Neil, hidden by the bulk of Andrew's body, and Neil bends his knee, still working out his options but ready to spring into action.

"Think again." Andrew growls at Riko, his claws scraping a terrible squeal against the slippery tiles.

"You speak." Riko sounds stunned.

Neil spots his pack, only a few paces away on the ground where Andrew had left it. If he backs up slowly. He slides his free hand into the pack and grabs his water skin. He can't see what Riko is doing; he knows that Andrew must be using his body to shield Neil from Riko's line of sight, but there's that crackle that signifies magic, and then Andrew bellows in pain, and lurches sideways.

"You speak. You performed magic. I could make a fortune off you," says Riko, and his torch betrays a manic gleam in his eyes. He abruptly stops, his train of thought derailed, when he sees Neil. "Who--?"

Neil doesn't give him the chance. He opens his water skin and sprays the entire lot at the flintlock pistol. Riko looks down at at his wet gun, and swears. Flintlocks don't do well in water, and that's when Andrew lunges forward, front claws extended, swiping at Riko. With a scream, Riko throws himself sideways.

"Go." Andrew doesn't turn to look at Neil.

Neil scrabbles for grip, and heaves himself towards the door. "Andrew. You've got to let them go. Let them turn back!"

There's the click of a trigger – and the sound of a gunshot. Neil stops on the threshold of the door, and looks behind him, eyes wide. Andrew staggers.

"Andrew!"

" _Go!_ " Andrew roars, and for the first time, Neil feels his magic. A terrifying wind whirls around the rooftop with Andrew at its centre before uncoiling and blasting Neil through the door, slamming it ominously shut behind him. Neil tries not to think of the gunshot that's still ringing in his ears, and runs down the stairs with the wind following at his back.

There are still a few soldiers, but they're mostly concerned with leaving the mansion, now that they've set a fire in all the rooms. Neil practically flies to the library, leaning low and forward, with his sleeve pressed against his nose and mouth. The smell of oil is strong in the air. He knows what damage smoke does to a person's breathing, and it's imperative that he gets to Aaron and Nicky.

The door is open, and Neil can see the line of fire across the doorway, already eating the carpet. Andrew's wind blows ahead of him, bending the flames enough that Neil jumps over them. He feels the searing heat against his skin, and ignores it.

Fire devours the library quicker than the other rooms. The books, oh, the books! A good third of the room is ash already, which blows through the air in tiny, charred sparks, a veritable rain of fire.

"Neil!" That's Nicky – and he's human again. Neil tumbles towards where they've pulled themself under the desk, the hardest thing in the room to burn. He'd marvel at seeing them as human, but there's no time for that. They stumble towards him and he pulls them into the centre of the wind.

"We're never going to make it," yells Aaron, his voice muffled into a cushion.

Neil points. "When the wind pushes," he says curtly, too mind-tired to explain properly, and drags them behind him. They're both clumsy to move; neither of them have had actual bodies for over a year now, so Neil has to practically throw them over the flames, ignoring the way the flames lick at his boots and the floating embers burn blisters over his skin.

He has to swat at his breeches for a second when he mistimes his own jump, and a flame catches the bottom of it, and then he leads them towards the servants quarters. They're closer, and there's also no carpets lining these floors. Once the door separating the quarters is shut behind them, Neil leans heavily on the walls for a moment, relishing the relative coolness.

"We have to keep going," he says, his voice raspy, and points. The lack of carpet and luxurious drapes everywhere might make them slower to burn, but there are still fires set in these rooms. They go down the stairs, towards the kitchen, and out through the back.

The sudden cold air of the outdoors makes all three of them heave and cough, trying to hack the black smoke out from their lungs. Nicky tries to stop, already out of breath, and Aaron's not much better, but Neil pushes them until they reach the stables, at least. There are no fires here, and both of them are in light clothes, and once the adrenaline wears off, they'll be freezing. The stable isn't heated, but it's shelter at least.

Neil drags some horse blankets over them. The smell is atrocious, but he barely notices. "I've got to find Andrew."

"Hey," says Aaron. He pulls himself upright, and Neil notices that he's short. He wonders if this small, compact young man with pale hair is what Andrew would look like. "Neil. Thanks."

Neil nods, absently, and leaves them in the stable. The tiredness and cold is settling into his muscles now, and he can feel the pockets of burned skin on his hands and face when he moves. He dropped his axe somewhere between the roof and the library, he can't quite remember where. A small splinter of Riko's men walk around the back of the house, perhaps looking for him, and Neil waits impatiently until they're gone.

He can't hear anything from the rooftop, but he climbs the ladder up anyway. It's rusted and slippery and Neil knows he's not at his best, so he takes it slower than he would like to get up to Andrew.

There are two prone forms lying on the ground. He reaches Riko's first. He's lying with his face to the sky, his eyes wide with surprise. There are parallel scores across his face and body, and in this weather, the blood pooling under him is already starting to congeal. Neil doesn't spare him a second glance, and moves to Andrew's side.

"Andrew!"

There's a quiet rumble, and Neil sees the furred body heave with laboured breaths. He's alive. But when Neil kneels next to him, he sees that Andrew's on his side, curled over, and when he eases his hands through the fur to help him up, his hands come away sticky.

"Shit. He shot you. He – fuck, Andrew, show me where."

Andrew grabs Neil by the shirt, and pulls him close, sniffs him, as if he's too tired to even open his eyes to check it's really him. Neil finds the wound, hot and still oozing blood, and pulls his coat off to staunch it, even though he knows it must be too late. How long had it taken for him to run through the mansion and find Nicky and Aaron? At least a quarter hour, probably more. Andrew's been bleeding all this time.

"For fuck's sake," says Neil, and he finds his voice rising uncontrollably with each word. "Goddamnit, Andrew! Save yourself! For once in your fucking life, save yourself!"

"Can't." The word whistles out between breaths.

"You can do whatever the fuck you want," says Neil, and the words feel like throwing up jagged glass shards. He looks at Andrew, dying on the rooftop, and says., "If you die, all three of us die with you. Aaron and Nicky can barely walk properly, and their lungs are smoke-filled. Riko's men are still down there, you don't think they'll catch and kill us all if they find us?"

Andrew's eyes open and he registers something, perhaps the burns on Neil's face or the desperation in his tone, or perhaps the fact that he's still here even though the house underneath them is burning. "Don't."

Neil carries on. He doesn't care if Andrew hates him forever, for manipulating him this way. But by god, Neil is leveraging the only three things that Andrew cares about to save him if he has to. And he has to.

"Change back, Andrew. They won't recognise you if you're human. Run away with me."

"I'm _not_ human."

"Yes," insists Neil, "You are. You're the most human human I've met in my life. You saved me from Riko. You saved Aaron and Nicky. You're not a monster, Andrew. I know monsters, and you aren't it. Run away with me."

"I made you stay."

"Yeah, you did." Neil grabs Andrew's head when he turns it away. "But you didn't do it with your magic. And now I'm leaving. And I want you to come with me."

Andrew stares at him for a long time, as if weighing his words up. "You were never afraid of me."

Wedging an arm underneath Andrew's body, Neil puts his whole body weight behind helping Andrew up. "Like I said. I've met monsters before, Andrew, and you aren't one."

Andrew pushes Neil's arm away from him. He huffs, each breath an admission of pain. "I want," he says and stops, as if he's never said those words aloud. He changes his sentences. "I don't want this."

Neil's heart sinks for a moment, and then Andrew pulls his legs up underneath him slowly.

"I don't want _this_ ," he says, more emphatically and suddenly hauls himself upright, all ten feet of furred body looming over Neil's head for a moment before he's falling, no, shrinking, and Neil can hear the crackle of magic even though it doesn't touch him at all. There's the sound of tearing fabric and bursting seams.There's a small _ping_ and a bullet drops to the ground as fur recedes to reveal pale hair and pale skin and the same angry eyes Neil would recognise from a mile away, only smaller.

"Andrew," breathes Neil.

Andrew stumbles forward, fisting his hands into Neil's shirt. Neil leans forward automatically, half catching him and half pulling him in, and then Andrew kisses him, a clack of teeth against teeth, fierce as the fire still raging underneath them.

They break apart when Neil coughs again – the smoke, he'd tried to keep most of it out, but it had been inevitable. He peels his coat off him and offers it up, averting his eyes. Andrew drapes it over himself, regards Neil for a moment, and then picks up the pack that Neil seems forever to be forgetting. "Let's go."

~*~

Andrew can't put out all the fires. They move on from the stables, but pause where the edge of the garden becomes part of the woods, to watch the mansion burn. Magic is an extension of nature, from what Neil knows, and the fire is too powerful for Andrew to reverse them now. Instead, he tells them more, more, and the fires roar, and they hear the creak of the upper floors colliding with the lower floors.

"Such a waste," says Nicky, as the windows shatter with the heat and smoke wafts upwards from the windows. "All those rare books on magic."

Andrew taps his temple. "They're in here." He's shivering, also unused to the proportions of a human body again. There's a wound in his side where the bullet hit him, though an abundance of healing spells means that it's angry and red and seeping blood, rather than an open hole in his side. "Come on."

~*~

Wymack makes a small fortune off Neil the following fortnight. He rents out the two largest rooms in the inn, and pays extra for food, a lot of it, to be sent upstairs. Dan regards him with suspicion when she hands over a laden tray, and Neil smiles apologetically at her.

Their story is that Neil met up with his travelling friends but they've taken ill with the cold weather, and are holing themselves up whilst they recover. It's not completely untrue: Andrew's exhausted his knowledge of healing spells and it looks like they're in no real danger from the fire smoke anymore, but they do spend several days coughing up black bile. Neil's burns have been soothed, though he'll have pocked skin until it heals properly, and Andrew still looks like he's been stabbed in the side. Neil spends a lot of time fretting over it until Andrew tells him to go away, he can take care of it himself. (Neil ignores him, and goes to heat more water.)

Nicky and Aaron share one room, and Neil shares the other with Andrew. The first night, Andrew steals not only the covers, but also every single thing in the room made of fabric, leaving Neil to wander downstairs in the middle of the night, bemused, to ask for all of their spare blankets. "Sweating out the fevers," he says, when Wymack looks at him, unimpressed.

Neil slips out in the morning to find clothes that fit everyone. He'd packed for himself, but hadn't never really thought that anyone else would come with him. Though he has plenty of money, it's hidden in smaller stashes, and it's going to need replenishing soon, especially since he's given Wymack a fair amount to keep his mouth shut should any Moriyama men come sniffing around.

Everyone else is still in bed by the time he gets back, and Neil gets to watch them all rouse slowly, tempted by the smell of fried mushrooms and bacon. He leaves again after lunch, to check that Riko's men have all left, and borrows a pickaxe and length of rope from the inn to bring back more firewood. He might be paying properly this time, but he knows that Wymack still doesn't like to chop fire in the cold.

Aaron and Nicky eat enough to make up for the last year, and spend a lot of time reacquainting themselves with their bodies. Andrew folds himself into a corner, burrowed into a heap of blankets, and watches them. Neil catches him looking, once or twice, looking down at his hand and flexing his fingers.

He's a man who doesn't like others to see his weakness, and so he moves a little slower, makes his movements deliberate and careful, to hide the fact that he, too, obviously doesn't quite know how his new body works.

"I need you write a letter for me," he tells Neil, three days after the fire, and Neil immediately scrounges around in his pack for his writing supplies. He hasn't used them in a while, but a pen and ink are always useful. Andrew dictates a letter to Lord Moriyama—not Riko, but his brother—and lays out the beginning of a negotiation.

Afterwards, Neil pushes the pen and ink towards Andrew, and tells him to keep it. Andrew doesn't touch them when Neil is in the room, but he does discover the rest of his paper missing, to his satisfaction.

The next morning, Neil heads out to chop firewood again. The snow is mostly melting by the time it touches the ground, and everything is covered in a layer of dew. Andrew slides out of bed, and follows him. It's still strange to not look up at Andrew when he speaks to him, and they move a little slower as Andrew trails behind him.

"Here?" asks Neil, stopping sooner than he might normally, in an attempt to account for Andrew's stifled, laboured breathing.

"It'll do," says Andrew shortly and then Neil hears that crackle. He turns around to see Andrew pull magic over himself like a cloak; it settles like a familiar friend over his skin, and then he thuds to the ground on all fours. "That's better."

Neil raises an eyebrow. "You want to stay like that?"

"I want to do whatever the fuck I want," says Andrew, which is both an answer and very much not. He shakes out his fur. "And right now, I want to be strong, and fast. And warm."

Reaching out with one hand, Neil waits until Andrew grunts his ascent, before carding one hand through the fur and pressing his forehead against Andrew's. "You're not a monster."

"I killed all those men at the mansion. And Riko," says Andrew matter-of-factly.

"That doesn't make you a monster."

"Of course not," says Andrew, as if Neil is the most stupidest thing on earth. "I'm pretty sure the fur and the fangs and the claws make me a monster. Are you coming?"

Andrew's mouth pulls into a grin, baring his fangs, as he stretches, and bounds deeper into the woods. Neil stares for a moment, and then grins back, and breaks into a run after him.

Andrew doubles around behind him, matching his pace. "Too slow," he says, and nudges at Neil's legs; Neil understands immediately, and lets Andrew slide underneath him. He sinks his hands into warm, damp fur, and holds on for dear life as Andrew breaks into a loping run.

Neil whoops, and Andrew tells him that he's an idiot, he's scaring off all the prey. Neil laughs.

They do chop firewood too, on their way back. Andrew takes the pickaxe off Neil, and fells a small sapling, promptly leaving the bulk of the heavy lifting to Neil and disappearing off into the woods again. Neil ties the wood into manageable piles, dragging them behind him, and he's almost back to the village when Andrew reappears, in his human form, huffing, with an armful of piglets, and trades his load.

Wymack stares at the two of them, when Andrew stacks up all the wood next to the fire, and Neil hands over four fat piglets to the kitchen. Dan is delighted; suckling pig is a delicacy, rarely found, and promises Neil that he and his friends can have a whole one to themselves. Neil opens his mouth to make up a lie, and Wymack throws his hands up. "I don't want to know."

Behind the doors of their own room, Andrew draws his fur on again, and curls up in front of the fire. He's going to be impossible to keep warm in a life on the move, thinks Neil. Perhaps they won't go anywhere until spring.

"Read me one of your books," says Andrew, and flicks his tail when Neil is slow to comply. Neil digs through his bag, which has been unpacked since they arrived. He'd taken a few of the magic books, knowing their worth, and, in a fit of sentimentality, one full of stories. Of course Andrew had noticed him stowing them away. He picks the storybook, opens the page to where he'd finished last, and starts to read aloud, his head lolled against Andrew's shoulder.

~*~

Once they are all fit to travel, they part ways. Aaron is keen to get back to his own town, wondering if his sweetheart will have waited this long for him. Nicky has a home to return to too, but he promises to bring Erik and visit.

Neil and Andrew are awaiting a reply from Ichirou, but neither of them are inclined to sit around for it. The letter will find them. They'll return to the mansion, most likely, once the new Baron gets it fixed. It's the offer that Andrew made him. The books on magic are gone, likely lost to time forever if not for Andrew's memory. He's read every book on magic in that entire library, and he's willing to leverage that knowledge if the Baron is willing to pay for it.

But for now, they repack Neil's bag, with the remaining books at the bottom, and barter for a new water skin and handaxe. Andrew keeps one of the branches he hacks down to use as a walking stick, and the rest of the suckling pig joins the strips of dried, cured meat.

They pick a direction, any direction, and follow the path until they're out of sight of the village, and then they veer off into the woods, and Andrew ditches his stick. And they run away.

**Epilogue**

One brisk winter day, a young man at court receives a letter. The young man is dressed all in white, for his father has passed away recently, and his name is Ichirou. He rubs at his forehead; his father's estates are complicated, and though he has been prepared for this role all of his life, he finds himself wishing, at times, that he had someone who understood also, that he could share ideas with.

Ichirou had sent his younger brother—by blood, though not by name—to deal with some certain rumours that had haunted his family for the last few years, and retrieve various items of high value. His brother's men had straggled back to court the night before, barely a handful of them when he had fifty to accompany Riko.

The fight had been harder than they had expected. The family house had been destroyed in the battle, despite a small fortune spent on magical precautions bought with secrets and diamonds, and the artefacts they were looking for were gone. His brother was dead.

All these are thoughts that weigh on Ichirou's mind when he opens the letter. The letter is a curious thing; it had arrived on his writing table in the morning, though his man said that he had not brought any such letter in. It is attached with a length of string to a book, one which he had ordered to be retrieved from the family house. Strange then, that his men had reported them all gone.

Its contents are more curious still. They describe the happenings at the Moriyama mansion is a somewhat different light. It was Riko's decision to set the house on fire, it claims, and his death was his own folly. The letter writer proposes a deal, of sorts.

Ichirou is a cautious man, unlikely to take a letter from a stranger as truth, but he is also keen to not turn down any good offers prematurely. He pens his reply on the back of the paper, watches as it disappears before his eyes.

  
He is in his mourning period at the moment, but he looks over his books, and decides on what investments he wants to set in place. He makes arrangements to travel out to the mansion in the Spring.

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://www.defractum.tumblr.com)!


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